"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, April 10, 2006

Spellings Declares, "We've Waited Long Enough"

During a rare break between CBN fund-raising segments, Sec. Spellings took a few moments out of her busy schedule of threats, castigation, and ultimatums to sit down and chat with Mrs. Charbonneau--and to throw this big chunk of red meat to the basest of the base. Here's a clip that will mark the day that part of the truth leaked out:

Without No Child Left Behind and the truth in advertising we now have because of this law, parents are now armed with more information about what the quality of their schools are -- and when there are problems, what the specific problems are. Are they failing African- American kids in math, or is it Hispanic kids in reading? Is it special education? What are the specifics of the needs of schools? And parents can use that information to either exercise their options or not.

But this is one thing that I really intend to work more vigorously on this year, because we are discovering that the take-up of people who have these options available to them, either don’t know about them, haven’t been informed about them, or, in the example you used, simply can’t exercise them because there are not effective schools in a convenient way for families to access.

So, what are some of the ways to get around that? Charter schools, the Choice Incentive Fund. That’s either a way to extend supplemental services into a more adequate funding stream, or private school vouchers. We have put No Child Left Behind in place.We’ve given states now five or six years, school districts five or six years, to implement this. And accountability is meaningless if there’s not a day of reckoning. How long must parents wait to have quality education for their students? And I would suggest we’ve waited long enough.

Finally realizing that Americans see through the lies about using No Child Left Behind to improve public education, the fallback position ends up as, what else, full steam ahead. No more pretenses, damn the torpedoes, and pass me a prayer cloth--let's put this boat on the ground.